AUDIOBOOKS

5 Quarantine Companions

Texts consumed during the 2020 pandemic cycles.

East Hampton Library. Image captured by the author, c. 2018.

A companion text is a text whose company enabled you to proceed on a path less trodden. Such texts might spark a moment of revelation in the midst of overwhelming proximity; they might share a feeling or give you resources to make sense of something that had been beyond your grasp…. [1]

I have a library card from the East Hampton Library. Six months ago, I could take a short, 7-minute walk from my job to the late XIXth century building. This was a daily ritual. Always with headphones…I learned about the word peripatetic during one of these trips, in search of ataraxia —

‘[F]reedom from worry’. [T]his is said by the later Pyrrhonists to be the result of the suspension of judgement that they claimed to be able to induce. [T]he effect of making one happy. [2]

I know that by no means am I close to finding grace & freedom from worry,
but books remind me that men and women have tried for millenia, and these times spell a profound need for companions; resources to make sense of unprecedented climate regimes and novel pandemic cycles.